The Po Show

Dog on a Shock Pad

You'd think that karma would send me a little breathing room, now that the big hurdle of getting Matthew's transfer has been jumped, and the school year is winding down. (I'm STILL waiting for interviews with the schools to be scheduled, and yes, they did receive Matthew's packet, and yes, the packet did get reviewed. A caseworker will be calling me soon!, so they say.) We'd hoped that once he knew that he didn't have to go back to his school, he'd relax a bit. I told him that he had to show his appreciation for how much all his teachers had worked to help get him his transfer, by actually trying to do some work in class.

Has NOT happened. There have been several days in the last couple of weeks (more than 75%) in which he's gotten angry in class and refused to do any classwork. He can't explain to me why, other than he just can't concentrate on schoolwork. He's doing his homework fine, though I do often have to sit next to him and repeat, "Okay, next question!" after every single question to keep him on task.

Today I went out for about an hour and returned home to several voicemail messages. It seems that Matthew got very angry when asked to put his book away and get out his homework, and he jumped up and ran out of the classroom. They had to call an all-building alert, and his teacher finally found him in the gym. The school nurse got called in, and she told me (when I returned her message) that his teacher and the assistant principal had had to restrain his arms because he was flailing them around and hitting himself. They let him go, and he tried to bite the assistant principal on the arm. The nurse managed to get him redirected by telling him she had to take his blood pressure, and he eventually calmed down. He went and sat in her office and had a little conversation with another kid up there.

I talked to the school psychologist, who wants to work with me and Matthew's therapist to try and get a plan in place to get through the rest of the school year (just over three weeks now). His psychiatrist upped his risperidone again yesterday. I was going to go to Costco this afternoon, but decided that I couldn't risk being 20 minutes away, just in case.

They used to do these experiments with dogs, where they placed them on a shock pad and gave them random shocks. The dogs turned into cowering, paralyzed messes, never knowing when the next jolt was going to come, unable to do a thing. That's pretty much how I have felt for the last year and a half, never knowing when the next phone call was going to come, never knowing when I'll come home to the blinking light on the answering machine.